INSERTION: A clean rip-off of all I hold dear
by Veravine
Summary: My one and ONLY self-insertion: it was meant to be stupid, but ended up taking itself seriously...


__

INSERTION

Could this be any more of a rip-off of everything?

****

#1 - Amateurs Among Animorphs

*_This is a totally fictional account using characters based on myself and two friends, and possibly other people in a less direct way. Everyone else's names have been changed to protect them. Nobody sue me, please._

****

Chapter 1

It wasn't unusual for Vera to come into their private chatroom to find Nick and Carrie on the verge of an argument about something. She sighed as the others paused their role-playing game. "You could've kept going," she typed, just as she always did. "I don't know how long I'm going to stay." She shifted in the rock-hard chair in her dorm room. Unfortunately, swiping silverware from the cafeteria because she had forgotten to bring some from home was one thing: swiping one of the comfy chairs from the computer labs because the chairs in her room were uncomfortable was quite another. She shifted again, while considering putting one of her pillows underneath her. It wasn't like that ever worked - but that didn't stop her from hoping.

"I want to continue the one we were working on," Carrie sent. "We were hitting a lull anyway."

Vera smiled to herself. "Aw," she typed quickly, "I could've brought in GDI."

"NO!" Carrie "yelled" in big, bold print.

"LOL," Nick put in. As usual, he was being kind of quiet.

"Does everyone remember where we were?" Carrie typed.

Vera sighed again. "Alli and David were in a tree, Jobi was above them in his chipmunk body, Nick, Toranis, and Ikell were fighting John, Smith was knocked out, Jen was by Smith panicking because he was knocked out, Melissa, _Juvrenz_, and Fela were fighting with _Arctesch_ over Nri Elka… does anyone else get the feeling that we have an awful lot of characters for three people?"

"Most of them are yours," Carrie pointed out, adding a winking smiley face to her statement.

Vera checked her last post, skimming and counting. "There's three of us and fourteen characters. Seven are mine, four are Carrie's, and three are Nick's."

"Wow," Nick commented.

"Let's…" Vera hinted.

"~*~*~*START*~*~*~," Carrie typed-

-and Vera passed out.

*

Vera awoke to sunlight. She sat up slowly, carefully, and groaned as she rubbed her back. "It should _not_ be sunlight at 9:00 PM," she muttered.

Looking around, she was surprised to see that she wasn't alone. On one side of her, a blond girl who looked about twelve was sprawled, unconscious: on the other, equally dead to the world, was a teenaged boy wrapped in a heavy cloak. In fact, all she could see of the boy was his head, his booted feet, and one hand, which gripped a heavy-looking staff.

Scratching her head in confusion, Vera shook the closest part of the blond girl with her other hand. That "closest part" happened to be the girl's foot. "Hey," she called quietly. "Hey, wake up!"

The blond girl groaned, pushing herself off the lush green grass. "What happened?" she muttered.

"I don't know," Vera said. "Where are we?"

The girl rolled over to sit next to Vera. Of the three of them, only Vera woke up on her back: the other two had been lying on their stomachs. The cloaked boy stirred. "Looks like a park," the girl said, looking around the clearing they were in. A few people were looking at them oddly.

Looking around as well - and wondering why things seems to look… weird… Vera soon saw why people were staring. She pointed at a sign about twenty feet away. "We have to move," she said.

"Why?" The girl looked where Vera was pointing.

__

Keep off the grass, read the sign.

"Oh," the girl said. They stood up shakily as the boy started to push himself upright. The girl rubbed her forehead. "Does anyone else have a headache?" she asked.

"I'm feeling kind of out of it," Vera said. She frowned as she looked at the girl more closely. "Do I know you?"

"Maybe," the girl replied, "but I don't know you."

"Hey you kids! Can't you read?"

"Come on," Vera said. She reached down to help the boy stand up. "We can talk as we walk."

"If we can stay on our feet," the girl added ruefully. "I need a nap."

Vera smiled as she made her way to the closest path. "My name's Vera," she introduced herself. "Who are you guys?" The others stared at her. Vera smiled uneasily. "What?"

"No way you're Vera," the girl said at last. She sounded upset. "I mean, Vera sent me a picture. She's got short brown hair - and she looks _nothing_ like you."

Vera laughed. "Of course I have short brown hair," she giggled. She pinched some of her hair between two fingers and tugged on it. "I-"

She'd expected her fingers to slide right off her hair, considering she had it cut so it barely reached her neck. But, instead, her fingers slid on hair that was longer. It wasn't four inches long; it was six, ten, fourteen… Vera stared in shock as she pulled strands of blood-red hair into her field of vision. There seemed to be no end to it! In a panic, she dropped all but a few strands and, with a sharp tug, pulled them from her head. "Ow!" she shrieked. It wasn't fake! This hair _was_ hers! She looked at the strands she'd taken out, measuring them with her eyes. They were blood red right down to the root… whoever heard of naturally _blood red hair_? - and each of them was at least five feet long.

"Five feet…" she whispered. She looked behind herself: yes, the hair extended right down passed her knees. She faced forward again, shaking. "What's happened to me?" she demanded, her voice sounding like a strangled whine. "What's happened to me?"

"What's happened to _us_," the boy corrected her. "I mean, I look like Nick! This isn't right!"

"Nick?" the girl echoed, suddenly turning pale.

He nodded. "A character I role-play on the Internet. I mean, come on - do you think I _normally_ dress in a cloak and carry _this_ around?" he asked bluntly, holding up his staff.

"I'd been beginning to doubt…" the girl muttered. Then, suddenly, she put both hands to her mouth. "My braces!" she cried out. "My braces are gone!"

Meanwhile, Vera wasn't paying much attention to her companions. Instead, she looked around in a daze, trying to get her eyes to focus. Everything seemed so colorful, so bright… the girl's hair seemed butter yellow, not blond, but Vera's inability to make her eyes focus properly made the girl's neon blue eyes look like smudges on her face. Vera felt her own face - and jerked in surprise. Gone was its former slight pudginess - now the skin was unnaturally taut. Her cheekbones, originally almost undetectable, now jutted from her face. Her lips had become thinner and turned downward. Her once ordinary nose was smaller, its cartilage harder and almost pointed at the tip. Her eyes stretched out to her temples in a very unnatural fashion.

Then she looked at her hands - and knew the truth.

Her fingers had no nails, and she could only count up to eight on her fingers.

"Oh my God," she breathed. "I'm Ikell."

"What?" the girl asked, startled.

Vera didn't notice. Instead, she pointed at the boy. "And you're Nick!" she cried. Then she turned to the girl. "And you - younger, still blond, blue-eyed - you're Allison!" Vera laughed giddily. "It all makes sense!"

The girl looked at Vera skeptically. "Please," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "inform us of what 'makes sense'." She started getting mad. "I'm SHORT! I want to be TALL again! I want my braces!" She paused. "Did I just say that?" 

"I'm dreaming that we're all our default RPG characters," Vera replied calmly.

"Default…?" Now it was the boy's turn to sound skeptical.

"Generally, in Animorph RPGs, I'm Ikell," Vera explained calmly. "You've always been Nick - heck, we always _call_ you Nick! - and Carrie, lately, has usually been Alli."

"So, I'm dreaming we're our characters?" the girl - Carrie - asked.

Vera shook her head. "No, no. _I'm_ dreaming we're our characters."

"I know I'm not dreaming this. 'Default'." Nick laughed. Then he hefted his staff. "Thanks for the staff, though, whoever's dreaming."

"I can't imagine you without your beloved staff," Vera told him sweetly.

"Neither can I," Carrie agreed.

****

Chapter 2

The trio meandered down the path, letting the shock of total confusion be soothed by the naïve belief that they were trapped in someone's dream. Nick sheathed his staff in the holster strapped to his back. "So now what?" he asked. "We wander around the park until whoever's dreaming wakes up? Or is this a more interesting dream?"

Vera shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe Carrie _is_ the one who's dreaming. I mean, I pulled my hair out and that didn't wake me up. Of course, I've dreamed that I pinched myself and told myself that I wasn't dreaming because I didn't wake up… then woke up."

"That's weird," Carrie said. Vera shrugged. Carrie laughed. "Of course, you've always been weird."

Vera grinned. "Hah, hah. Looks who's talking." Carrie stuck her tongue out at Vera. 

"I'd say that makes it sound like this is Carrie's dream," Nick pointed out.

"How would Carrie know that if I get pinched in a dream I don't wake up?" Vera pouted.

"It sounds like something I'd believe about you," Carrie said.

Vera sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Nick's right, Carrie. This wandering aimlessly is boring. If it's your dream, send us a Taxxon or something to keep us occupied." She laughed. "Come on, Carrie! We're _bored_!"

Someone bumped into Nick. He gave them a sharp glare. "Hey, watch it," he said, sounding annoyed.

"Watch yourself," the person hissed back. She was blond, like Carrie, only her eyes were brown. She appeared closer to Nick's and Vera's apparent ages than Carrie's apparent one.

The three continued on. "Well, that was rude," Carrie said, to fill in the silence.

Vera laughed. "Very Rachelish."

"What?"

Vera glanced at her with another smile. "You know, like Rachel. From Animorphs."

"Oh, yeah." Carrie chuckled. Nick just rolled his eyes.

Suddenly, Vera's arm was grabbed from behind. She whirled, startled to suddenly find herself stuck. "Hey!" she snapped, then looked at who was holding her.

Her hair seemed to glow like muted sunlight - probably just normal blond, except that Vera was seeing everything in extreme Technicolor. Her smudgy, probably normal brown or hazel eyes glowed bronze. Then, the stranger who had so rudely bumped into Nick shoved her face in Vera's, and something at last came into focus - the stranger's dark, bronze-glowing eyes. _I'm nearsighted_, Vera thought aimlessly. "Who are you?" the stranger hissed.

"Um… a figment of her dream?" Vera replied, pointing back at Carrie. Carrie seemed confused. Nick drew his staff out of its holster.

The stranger's eyes narrowed, and her voice became even more desperate. "How do you know?" she demanded softly, but urgently. Then, as if for the first time, the stranger looked at Vera's too-long eyes, and took a step back. "What are you?" she whispered.

"I'll tell if you tell," Vera replied hotly. Then she looked at Carrie. "Listen, can you get this other figment off me?"

Carrie shrugged. "You talk like an idiot and nobody's beating up Nick. I don't have control of this dream. Sorry." Nick looked at her sharply, but she ignored him.

"Listen to me," the stranger snapped. "I don't know who, or what, you are, but you're going to correct that right now, understand?"

"No, you listen to _us_," Nick snapped, coming forward. "First, you let Vera go." The stranger glared at him, then did as he "asked". "Next, you tell us what the hell your problem is."

The stranger glared at them. "I asked first," she said finally.

Carrie rolled her eyes. "_That's_ mature."

"No, no, she's right," Vera said, holding up her hands. Then she held one out to the stranger. "My name is Ikell," she said, pronouncing it "Eek-kill". "I'm a totally insane alien capable of shape-shifting into whatever the hell I want. You've met Nick, our friendly magical Yeerk weapon with a mind of his own, and behind us, dreaming this entire scenario up, is Allison, David's little sister."

The stranger's eyes widened. Then she shook her head and looked generally pissed off. "You're nuts," she snapped, then turned around.

"Oh, no!" Vera called after her. "We're not nuts! We're just dreaming!"

The stranger stopped, paused a moment, then came back. "I don't care _what_ you're doing," she hissed at Vera. She glanced around, as if she thought she was being watched. A little discomforted, Vera did the same. "Listen," the stranger said again, "I don't care who, or what, you are, or if you're just nuts or whatever. You know way too much. How?"

"Know too much of what?" Vera asked blankly.

"Hello?" the stranger said, her voice dripping sarcasm. "My name? A certain 'A' word? Another certain 'T' word?"

"'A' word? 'T' word?" Vera echoed.

"What are you talking about?" Nick demanded.

The stranger shook her head. "Forget it. Forget it! Nothing." She turned to leave.

"You mean Animorphs?" Carrie asked.

The stranger turned around so quickly she almost fell over. "How do you _know_ that?" she demanded.

The trio shared confused glances. "You can find it at any bookstore," Vera said. "Except Wal-Mart, I mean. They don't get it until two months late. It's pathetic."

The stranger just stared at them in confusion.

"Wait a minute… oh my God…" Carrie said, slapping her own forehead. "We're our RPG characters, right?"

"So?" Nick prompted her.

"So…" Vera looked at the stranger. "Rachel, right?" The stranger simply stared back. "Oh, _shit_." 

****

Chapter 3

"You know this is _your_ dream, right, Carrie?"

"I _told_ you, I can't control it!"

"Focus on the moon."

"The moon?!"

"I don't know! I saw it on Star Trek!"

"Would you two just _stop_ it?" Nick snapped. He sat on a hay bale, gripping his staff so tightly that his knuckles were white. "Just _stop_ it! You're giving me a headache."

Vera and Carrie both looked at the top of Nick's staff, and decided to be quiet.

The top of the staff was glowing.

From long hours of role-playing experience, they knew what that staff was capable of.

Carrie frowned. "You know, if this _is_ my dream…" She turned to face Vera. "Vera, turn into Ikell."

Vera glared at her. "What?"

Carrie crossed her arms. "You're in Ikell's human morph. I want you to turn into Ikell in her true form. It's time for me to take control of my dream, right? So the first thing I want is you to turn into Ikell."

Vera sighed. "I don't know how to _do_ that," she grumbled. "I don't have a set way she does it! I _write_ about Ikell. I'm _not_ Ikell. I mean, Ikell has a split mind, right? She has a Hork-Bajir set of instincts and a Bayetajin set of instincts, and you know what? I'm getting squat. All I know is that looking around is like looking at a 60's disco. Neon colors and no straight edges. Everything is blurry and bright. Do you have any idea how upset that has me? I have _19/20_ vision, Carrie. Better than normal! And now it's down to, like, maybe 200/20. I can't see anything clearly unless it's about two inches from my face! I'm _upset_, Carrie! Don't order me around when I'm upset!"

"Whoa," Nick breathed.

Carrie's shoulders slumped. "Okay, that was a bad idea," she mumbled.

Vera shook her head. "No, you're right, I'm sorry." She sighed again. "Okay, I _did_ write one part in a story I scrapped. It had Ikell meeting her sister, _Orba_, and teaching her how to use the shape-shifting ability. She…" Vera bit her lip. "To _use_ it, she said to think of yourself as a mirror. Try to _reflect_ what you want to be, not _be_ it. To… to stop it…" She shook her head. "She never said how to reverse it. _Orba _did it on her own."

"So try to reflect what Ikell should look like," Nick suggested.

Vera bit her lip again. "Okay," she said quietly. She took a deep breath, then closed her eyes. She concentrated on the Animorphs character she had created way back in the first cycle of books, around when books three and four were still new. She concentrated on the conflict, the uncertainty, she had ingrained in her favorite character. Then she concentrated on the appearance - the neutral green, leathery flesh, the golden eyes with a hint of green, the heavy claws and slight blades, the intelligent, curious face and brilliant red mane.

She felt sort of dizzy, as if gravity wasn't right. Sort of like how she'd felt when she donated blood. She lost feeling in some of her fingers and toes. Opening her eyes, she was shocked to see something green start sprouting from her face. "AHHHHH!!!!!" she shrieked, crossing her eyes to look at the green… thing. "AHHHHH! AHHHHH! AHHHHH!"

"Shut up!" Carrie hissed.

"My face!" Vera shrieked. "My face!" Except, because her face was deformed, it came out like, "Mffass! Mffass!"

"Just close your eyes, and keep up what you were doing," Carrie urged her. "I think it's working."

"Looks it," Nick agreed. "Man, you're good at dreaming, Carrie."

"Shut up," she told him distractedly.

Closing her eyes and taking a shaky breath, Vera returned to concentrating. She thought of the long, curved, agile claws, the ear holes. The goat-like back horns and the long, bottle-opener-like forward horn that curved smoothly back. She thought about the tutorial on drawing Ikell she'd started when she was insanely bored. _An average human is six or seven heads tall_, she'd written. _Because Ikell is incredibly tall, her proportions would be closer to eight and a half heads tall_.

The dizzy, gravity-gone-wrong, lack-of-blood-flow-to-the-head feeling faded. Opening her eyes again, Vera found that colors were still out of proportion, and her field of vision oddly skewed - she could see farther left and right, but at the cost of the fact that her vision was blurry and impossible to keep focused on too many things at once. Now, she could look at Carrie, or Nick, and see them clearly, but she couldn't look at both.

Actually, she couldn't look _at_ either of them.

She could only look _down_.

"Whoa," she breathed, her voice sounding somewhat masculine, "eleven feet tall is _tall_." She looked up at the rafters of the barn, and touched one of them with her three-fingered hand. She didn't have to stretch to do it. "This is awesome."

"So _that's_ what Ikell looks like," Carrie said quietly. "Wow."

Vera put her arm down, then looked at her hands. It was unnerving; looking straight ahead, she could _almost_ see clearly, but she could also see her mouth stretching out in front of her. In fact, unless she looked up, there was no way _not_ to see her mouth stretching out in front of her. Still, she focused on her hands, on the delicate fingers and thumb ending in long claws. "It's just like I pictured it," she breathed, awed. She twisted her head to look almost directly behind her, at the stubs on her shoulderblades. "Every last detail." She raised her long, thin tail, and grinned a sharp-toothed grin at the heavy, half club-like, half sword-like, somewhat lobster-claw-like blade that it ended with. "Nick's right, Carrie," Vera said. "You sure know how to dream."

Carrie pouted. "It'd be cooler if Nri Elka were here," she said.

Vera shrugged, then decided never to do it again. It felt too awkward. "Can't help you. It's your dream."

Carrie frowned. "If it didn't sound so crazy, I would say I didn't think I was dreaming."

"_Please_, Carrie," Vera said, frowning, "_don't_ say that."

"Okay," Carrie agreed. Then she turned to Nick. "Okay, if it's my dream, now I want you to… um… beat up John."

He looked at her skeptically. "I can't summon John any more than Vera can summon Nri Elka," he pointed out. "It's your dream. You summon him."

Carrie suppressed the urge to stamp her foot. "For the last time, I _can't control what's happening_!" she yelled. "This isn't my dream!" She fell to the floor, hugging her legs. "This isn't my dream," she said again, more calmly. "Vera, maybe it _is_ yours. After all, you could change."

"I didn't want to," Vera pointed out. "I'd much rather be a different character, you know? Ikell's too… complicated. Sure, I love writing about her, but I stopped role-playing her. I know, sometimes I still do, but I avoid it. She's too complicated. What happens to her… I've written her life from birth to about a hundred years from now. Being her now totally screws that up."

"How does that screw it up?" Nick asked, confused.

Vera shook her head. Just as when Ikell shook her head in Vera's stories, her thick, blood red mane writhed around her as if it was alive. "Don't ask," she answered him. "Just don't. It's a personal thing. I don't like messing with my own characters."

"So who would you rather be?" Carrie asked.

"Aren't those guys taking an awful long time to get here?" Nick asked out of the blue. "I mean, in the books, if they wanted to get together, they went to the next chapter and _poof!_ they were all accounted for. What's taking them so long?"

"Real time," Vera muttered, leaning an alien hand on one of the rafters. "The dream's running in real time. This is too weird. What dream runs in real time? Since when did dreams run so easily from point a to b to c? This is driving me nuts!" She dug her long talons into her mane.

Carrie stretched her legs out in front of her. "You know," she said, "I'd rather be Jen than Alli. Alli's nothing without David." Then she gasped.

First, she grew taller, but not overly tall. She grew gracefully thin. Her blond hair grew darker, to a very dark brown, and curled a little. Her loose tee shirt changed colors from black to turquoise, and her eyes changed from blue to light green. She looked around, startled. "What happened?"

"You… changed," Nick said. "Just like Vera did."

It was then that Rachel returned, this time with a short black girl with extremely short hair. They stopped short, both staring wide-eyed at Vera.

Vera spread her hands, palms outward. "It's all right," she said. "It's me. The red-haired girl from before. Okay? This is what I _should_ look like." Then she glanced back at Nick and Carrie, and decided that she might want to change tactics. "Okay," she said again, "I'm going to change into something a little less threatening, okay? Okay?" Slowly, the dark-skinned girl nodded.

Thinking frantically, Vera went through all of the Animorphs characters she had ever created. There had to be thirty of them. She considered the alien races she'd created. Bayetajin? No - that was even bigger, worse than she already was! Jyruu? No - that was probably not the way to go. Andalite? Maybe… Then it struck her - just jumped in her face and yelled "TADA!"

Quickly, Vera closed her eyes and started concentrating on her own physical appearance… short brown hair, hazel eyes, sturdy as a brick wall, looking a couple years older than she truly was…

Of course, it wasn't _herself_ she was concentrating on.

At the same time as she was concentrating on her appearance, she concentrated on a self-assured person, an independent, smart-mouthed girl used to fending for herself, a girl very much unlike Vera. A girl who _liked_ living on her own - except that she had one companion. One companion who _died_, same as the person she concentrated on died.

It was a chance in a million. But it had to work.

This was a dream, right?

In a dream, you should be able to turn into characters you killed off… right? 

****

Chapter 4

The blood-loss-to-the-head feeling came again, and now that she knew what was happening, Vera felt herself shrinking. She sighed in relief as she sort of felt her long red hair tickling its way up her back as it became much, much shorter. She soon could feel all her fingers and toes. Her heels finally touched the ground - something she hadn't noticed until she actually stood on them. Opening her eyes, she was glad to have the normal human field of vision. She smiled at Rachel and her dark-skinned companion as the last of her once beak-like mouth disappeared. "Hello," she said in a voice a little less annoying than her normal one. "This is what I _should_ look like." Briefly, she wondered why she hadn't considered being herself, then decided that she'd been hoping for her character's self-assurance. Unfortunately, it wasn't readily apparent.

"That's what you said about the fifteen foot dragon," Rachel pointed out.

Vera grinned sheepishly. "Well… uh… actually, no," she said finally. "_This_ is my normal, everyday look. This is how I usually walk the streets. That 'dragon' thing? A total figment of my imagination that, for some stupid reason, I can turn into now, just as I could have that 'dragon's human form. And it was eleven feet tall, not fifteen."

There was a clatter against the outside of the barn, and a somewhat tall boy with short brown hair hurried in. "Had to bike," he said, breathing heavily. "Tom." The girls nodded. Then he looked at the trio. "What's going on?" he asked.

"One of them-" Nick said, using one hand to point at Carrie, the other at Vera, "-is dreaming."

"We're not sure who," Carrie added, "but we want them to wake up, because this dream is getting too weird."

"Agreed," Vera said, lacking anything better to say.

"It can't be my dream, because Vera uses words I'd never use," Nick said.

"Same here," Carrie agreed.

"But it can't be _my_ dream, because… well, because," Vera finished lamely.

"Why do you think you're dreaming?" the dark-skinned girl asked.

"Let me think about that," Carrie snapped.

"Well, for one thing, we're in the barn of a fictional character in a book series I've been reading for four years," Vera pointed out.

"What?" the dark-skinned girl asked blankly.

"What _are_ your last names, anyway?" Carrie asked.

"What do you mean, what are our last names?" Rachel demanded.

Explanations were offered, and everything was re-explained as, one by one, a Hispanic boy, a telepathic hawk, and an eerily pretty-looking boy showed up in the barn filled with wild animals of every variety.

"And I thought _our_ lives were nuts," the Hispanic boy, Marco, said. "Now I know it's just fiction. That's cool. I'll pay homage to K.A. Applegate everyday, without fail. I will totally behave on her every whim. Oh, wait. I probably already do that. But I'll start paying homage. Of course, unless my fans don't want me to. Then I'll just have to hope I stay on her good side, right?"

Black and white print doesn't give credit to the amount of sarcasm he used. No amount of written description could describe the harsh bite to each syllable, the sneer he didn't wear, but spoke. No amount of typing by this author could hope to tell of how big a load a crap Marco thought the entire story was.

So this author will not even try.

"No way we can be fiction," Rachel said, looking at the brown-haired boy - Jake - as if he was the only one who could possibly prove what she said was right. "I mean, all the battles, all we've lost - "she said with a glance at the hawk, who had once been a boy named Tobias, " - how can it all be fake?"

"But how could they know?" the dark-skinned girl, Cassie, asked. "How could they know so much if it wasn't written down somehow? How could they know what we've been thinking, what we feel?" This last part was said as she shared a significant glance with Jake.

"The entire concept of such a phenomenon is ridiculous," the oddly pretty boy - truly, an alien named Aximili in a human form - said. "It is impossible for a living being to be transposed into fiction, unless they were to accidentally fall into a television studio in front of a camera."

Vera shuddered. "I won't even _mention_ the TV show."

"TV show?" Marco echoed, perking up a bit. "Who cares about books! We have a TV show?"

"But that's exactly what this is like!" Carrie insisted. "It's like we've fallen into one of our role-playing games." She glanced at Marco. "You wouldn't like the TV show. "

"There's role-playing games, too?" Marco asked. "How big _is_ our publicity? What does everybody think of me?"

Carrie and Vera traded a glance. Carrie winked at Vera, then smiled at Marco. "Millions of girls are throwing themselves at K.A. Applegate's feet, begging to be written in as your girlfriend."

Nick and Jake both rolled their eyes.

"Seriously, though," Vera said. "Where we're from, you're fiction. That's why one of us-" she gestured towards herself, Carrie, and Nick, "- _have_ to be dreaming this entire thing."

Rachel jumped to her feet, her hands balled into fists. "I am _not_ fiction!" she snapped. "After all we've been through," she demanded of the others, "after all that's happened, how can you _listen_ to this? How can you stand it? They're calling us _fake_! They saying we _don't exist_!"

"It's… kind of comforting," Cassie said slowly. "There's no harm in listening, Rachel."

Jake sighed. "It's not like we can hide anything from them," he said. "I mean, Cassie's right - they seem to _know_ everything. They probably know a lot they aren't telling." He glanced meaningfully at each of the three, one at a time, before continuing. "If they want to say that it's because, where they're from, we're fictional characters, I don't really care." He leaned his arms on his knees. He was sitting on the floor between Cassie and Marco; all of them were sitting on the floor of the barn in an enclosed, vaguely circular shape. "What matters is, on the Internet, series have a lot of fan followings, right?"

"Countless, in your case," Vera admitted. "And I mean that seriously, unlike Carrie's mention of Marco's potential girlfriends."

"How about spoilers?"

The trio looked at each other, not sure how to reply.

"That's crazy, Jake," Marco praised him.

"We…" Vera began.

"Um…" Carrie started.

Nick leaned forward. "Listen," he said. "How do we know what's spoilers and what's old news?"

It was the Animorphs' turn to share a wordless glance.

"It's not like we can ask you what number book you're on," Carrie said. "It isn't like we can say, 'Okay, here's the last battle you fought, here's what's coming up'."

"We can't give you spoilers anyway," Vera said. "The book series isn't in real time, of course. It doesn't have the weeks that go by without anything happening."

"I miss those weeks," Marco said.

"By the time we went through all we know," Nick said, "it… well, it'll be awhile."

"Besides," Vera said, "what'll happen if we _do_ tell you something?"

"I do _not_ want to know," Carrie agreed, shaking her head.

"So you're not going to help us?" Rachel demanded.

Nick shrugged. "Simply put, we can't."

"Sorry," Vera said, then immediately felt stupid for saying it.

There was silence for a few minutes.

"I really, _really_, want out of this dream," Carrie said. Vera nodded silently.

"So now what?" Marco asked.

"We can't keep them prisoner or anything," Rachel said. "She-" she pointed at Vera, "-can turn into a ten-foot-tall dragon that makes a Hork-Bajir look like nothing more than an ugly pin cushion."

"Eleven feet tall," Vera corrected her quietly.

Rachel glared at her. "Don't start with me."

Vera shrugged a little. "Fine," she replied, her voice a little quieter, "I won't start wi-"

*

Vera woke up, once again, lying in grass.

She moaned as she sat up, then checked her hands. Once more, she came up a finger short. "Damn it!" she snapped. She felt her face: still kind of pudgy, but shaped wrong. Things were too bright again, but this time, they were too sharply focused. Her eyes were too big again, her nose too small. Her mouth felt normal, at least, but now her ears swept up and back. She looked at her feet: boots. She pulled strands of her hair forward, onto her shoulder; it was blond, now, and came down to her waist. She stood up and stretched.

Beside her, Carrie also stood up, but this time, she was a noticeable foot taller than Vera. She looked down in surprise. "Vera?" she guessed.

Vera nodded. "Yup," she replied. She looked behind herself; along with her hair, she could now see a long, thin tail emerging from her pants. "Evollan, I think."

"Eve-what?" Nick asked, standing. He leaned against his staff.

"A race I made up. Evoll - a mix of elf and troll." She frowned. "I've used a character like this - a blond Evollan - a few times. She's a main character in one of my own story lines - an original, not a fanfic. And I was also considering using her in an Everworld fanfic."

Above them, a roar suddenly filled the air. Four figures appeared from the edge of the woods surrounding the clearing they had awakened in, racing toward them frantically.

One was a brown-haired boy lugging a sword.

One was a paler-haired boy screaming.

One was a black boy, his mouth set in a grin of pure terror.

One was a red-haired girl cursing the skirt she wore loud enough for the trio to hear.

"Oh, _shit_," Vera muttered.

"You have to be the one dreaming!" Carrie yelled at her. "I didn't know about any Evolls!"

"I'm trying to wake up!" Vera shrieked. "I'm trying! I'm trying! Oh, God, this isn't a dream!"

"It _has_ to be!" Carrie screamed at her.

"We don't tell anybody they're fiction, right?" Nick shouted at the two of them.

"RUN!" Vera screamed. "We don't want to have to do that!"

And the three of them ran.

__

This was, in no way, meant to be a rip-off of Quantum Leap. It just has that feeling to it.

Multitudes of thanks to those I designed Carrie and Nick after. They know who they are. I offer any apologies necessary for anything I made their characters - and all other characters in this fic - do that is out of character - which is, possibly, absolutely everything they did. The numbering of this fanfic is a total joke - I have no plans on writing a continuation of this. Of course, I always accept constructive criticism (for those of you who know who you are, that means flames that consist of more than various forms of "you suck, and Animorphs sucks!"). Feel free to make use of the rating system, or e-mail me directly at [veravine@aol.com][1]_. I like e-mail, because then I can write back. I also like ratings, because it makes me feel special. Use whichever you like._

   [1]: mailto:veravine@aol.com



End file.
